Devils To Adore For Deities
by JGRhodes
Summary: Three crimes. Three challenges. Three chances to save Sherlock Holmes' life. "If you still want to save him, solve my puzzle. If you don't, or if you fail, I'll do to him what I did to Adam. You have three days. Cheers! Jim Moriarty x "
1. Farewell Happy Fields

_He's running._

_ His legs are screaming and his lungs are burning but he keeps running. His feet pound the old, decaying concrete beneath him to dust as he rounds corners at breakneck speed, gun held aloft, searching frantically._

_ There is a moment, when silence reigns throughout the empty, crumbling walls, in which John thinks his worst fears have come to pass. He stops in his tracks, bile in his mouth, heart in his shoes, and prays._

_ And all of a sudden, Sherlock starts screaming again._

_ The building itself shakes and moans as he plunges through, spurred onwards by the hollow echo of Sherlock's voice travelling down the decimated halls, out the broken, grimy windows, and onwards into the cold English countryside._

_ Please, he thinks. God, please. _

_But God doesn't answer his prayers, hasn't in a long time, and John doesn't have time to wait for him, so he searches the shadows, calling, "SHER –_

* * *

– LOCK!"

"Yes?" The word drifts across the flat languidly, working its way into John's ears and irritating the living shit out of him.

"There's an eyeball in my shoe."

"Lestrade hasn't called."

"_Why_ is there an eyeball in my shoe?"

"Must be Wednesday."

"Are you listening to me?"

Scrambling from his supine position under the table, Sherlock examines the various tubes and petri dishes that cover every conceivable surface of their kitchen. It takes less than three minutes for him to grow bored with perfecting his already immaculate experiments and utter the words John has been dreading hearing for the last twenty-four hours.

"I need a case."

"No."

"John –

"We're supposed to be on vacation, Sherlock! No Scotland Yard, no trips to A&E, and absolutely no cases!"

"Boring."

Slamming his mug down on the counter, John turns to face the Consulting Detective. "Oh, right. Absolutely. Spending time with your best friend, away from the world that you detest _so_ much, is boring. How could I have missed it?"

Sherlock raises his head and fixed John with The Look. The one that says _'I know you're smarter than this, so why do you insist on acting so stupid?'_

John hates that look with every fiber of his being. "Don't do that."

"What?"

"The face!"

"Oh, for pity's sake!"

"You know I hate that face but you keep doing it!"

Sherlock strides across the room and snatches his bow from where it rests on top of a body bag spread out on the table. "Don't be dramatic, John."

"Dramatic? Dram – sod this. I'm going out," he says, striding through the entrance to the living room and grabbing his coat from the back of his chair.

He's halfway to the door and already stewing in his own anger before Sherlock speaks. "You knew what you were signing up for when you agreed to live here."

"Yeah, well, it wouldn't kill you to try and be normal for once.

_That was the wrong thing to say,_ he thinks later, pressing his cold beer against his temple, trying to ignore the throbbing in his head and the dull ache behind his eyes.

Only his friend could rile him to the point of a skull splitting migraine. And Sherlock _is_ his friend. He cares about the man, he really does, but sometimes he could be so…Sherlock…-y.

"Christ on a cracker, but he was cross," he says to Mike.

"Well, 'e would be, wouldn't 'e?" Mike says, shoving a handful of peanuts in his mouth.

Setting his glass down on the bar John twists his torso around so that he's half facing his friend. "When did you become an expert in Sherlock Holmes?"

Mike laughs and little bits of peanut fly from his mouth. " 'M not. Never would want to be either. But think 'bout it, yeah? People 'ave probably been tellin' 'im to be normal since b'fore he could talk. Like that Donovan girl callin' 'im freak and all. And then you go an' do it. It's like a slap in the face, innit? Considering you two are…well. To each 'is own."

The words _'We're not a couple!' _are on the tip of his tongue but he swallows them down. "Not good, then?"

"I'd say, yeah."

"Fuck," he says, and raises two fingers to the bar keep. "I have to go apologize, don't I?"

"Ye-_p_."

"Bloody hell. Right. I need to go," standing, he reaches in his trouser pocket for his wallet.

"Nah, mate. I've got this," Mikey smiles at him. "You go kiss and make up."

John forces himself to return the smile – _'WE'RE NOT A COUPLE!'_ – and, with a "Ta!" and a wave, says goodbye.

He stumbles a bit as he walks down the street, his brain warm and fuzzy from the alcohol, until he reaches Baker Street. The flashing lights of police cars blind him as he rounds the corner and suddenly he doesn't feel quite so warm.

_Not again, _he thinks._ Please. Not again._

He rushes over; the street is swimming around him and the flashing lights are burning his eyes, but he shoves his way past officers and onlookers, until he reaches the police tape. He ducks under it without a second thought.

"John! John, wait! Stop!" there are hands on his arms, grappling for hold on his shirt sleeves, but he rips away and forces his way into 221B.

Mrs. Hudson is sitting at the bottom of the stairs crying, but he can't think about her right now. His mind is full of _Please Sherlock pleasepleaseplease be okay._

_Please, God, don't be dead. I can't survive this twice._

The flat lays gutted, its insides torn out and devoured by some strange, alien beast. He wanders around in a daze, boots crunching broken class beneath his feet, taking inventory of the damage.

His gun is on the mantle. Thousands of pounds worth of science equipment smashed on the floor, each shard a memory cultivated with more care than any experiment. His computer lay half hidden under the sofa and the violin rests largely untouched on the window sill, but the _light_ is gone.

This beast, this _monster_, gone and taken the single most important thing in John's life, taken the air right out of his lungs, and left him with a hole in his chest.

"John?"

He turns and faces Lestrade. Behind the Detective Inspector, Donovan and Anderson watch him, their faces cold and apathetic, waiting for his reaction. He opens his mouth to speak, but there are no words for what he is feeling. Emptiness, perhaps? Despair?

Regret?

"Where's Sherlock?" he asks.

Lestrade breathes deep and shoves his hands in his pockets. "We got a call from Mrs. Turner's lot. Said it sounded like a domestic gone awry. I came. Just me. I thought maybe Sherlock had baked a cows head in the stove again or something. No one answered the door. Not that he ever did. It was Sherlock, for Pete's sake. He never does anything normal. When I came up…I called for backup right away."

John cringes at Lestrade's innocent use of the word that had caused him so much grief, but silently rallies inside. Straightening his spine and setting his shoulders, he examines at the wreckage around him.

"He put up a fight," Lestrade says, and John smiles a bit.

"He's Sherlock," he replies, and that in itself is explanation enough.

"There's something else."

John follows his friend down the hall, past the kitchen and the bathroom, to Sherlock's bedroom door. "Are you ready for this?" Lestrade asks.

"No."

The door swings open and John breathes a sigh of relief. There's no mangled body in the bed, as he had feared. Somewhere, Sherlock is alive. You would have thought that made it all better, but it didn't.

A disk, a DVD, hangs from the ceiling fan, spinning gently in the breeze, and a message, scrawled on the wall above Sherlock's bed in cheap red paint, taunts him wickedly.

He stares at it, unable to grasp exactly what he's seeing.

_**Time to play, Johnny-Boy. **_


	2. A Soldier with a Stethoscope

_Play._

Sherlock is pale and whipcord thin. Thinner than John has ever known him to be. His trousers are frayed at the hem and the plain white tee he's wearing is threadbare. The drug exchange he's involved in is the least covert thing John has ever seen. It hurts him to see his friend like this, but it's nothing he didn't already know. He watches silently as Sherlock pays his dealer and begins to walk away.

The dealer reaches out and drags Sherlock back to him before throwing him up against a wall. Gestures are made, words are spoken, and Sherlock (inevitably) rolls his eyes.

What happens next makes John want to fill his mind with static and white noise.

He watches as the dealer unfastens his trousers and Sherlock drops to his knees. He knows what's going to happen, but he can't let it. He can't let people see him like this, this great mind reduced to…to…

He does the only thing he can think of.

He puts his fist through the telly.

"OI!" Lestrade pulls his hand from the broken, smoking telly and forces him into a chair. "What the bloody hell were you thinking?"

"I wasn't," he says, nursing his battered knuckles.

"I understand this is hard for you but you cannot destroy New Scotland Yard property!" Lestrade is weary and the words are forced.

"Why would Moriarty do this?" John asks, massaging his knuckles.

"Moriarty? You think Moriarty has something to do with this?"

"Of course he has something to do with this!" John snaps. "It's got his little Irish fingerprints all over it! But why? Why show me this?" he gestures to the telly.

"I dunno. Maybe he wants the world to see Sherlock at his worst? A promiscuous, homeless junkie?"

"If he wanted the world to see Sherlock at his worst he would have sent the disk to BBC, not to me. He knows I'll destroy it."

Lestrade looks horrified. "It's evidence!"

"You know you won't get anything off it. He's too smart for that. It'll only be a temptation to people in the yard who don't like Sherlock. If I leave it here it _will_ wind up on BBC."

"John –

There's a knock at the door and a man pops his head in. He's a tall man, dressed in a delivery uniform, and carrying a package. "Parcel for John Watson?"

Lestrade cocks his head. "Who'd be sending you a parcel here?"

John scribbles his name on the man's clipboard and takes the parcel from him. "I give you one guess."

Setting the parcel down on the table, ignoring the bug eyed look on Lestrade's face, he runs his fingers over the parcel. It's nothing more than a plain brown box, affixed with packing tape, addressed to him at New Scotland Yard. There's no return address. There's nothing remarkable about it at all. At least, not that he could see. If Sherlock were here he could probably deduce that the box was made in China, shipped to the UK on a Dutch ship, and assembled by illegal immigrants in a warehouse in Surry based solely on the wear around the edges and the lingering scent of soy sauce.

But Sherlock isn't there, it's just John, and he must do the best he can.

Plucking a pen from the desk he stabs at the slit between the flaps and slices it open.

"Jesus Christ, be careful! He blew up a whole block of flats, remember?"

_If he wanted me dead I'd be dead,_ John thinks wryly, opening the box.

The box is filled to the brim with oddities; newspaper clipping, a jar of water, and an orange pair of children's shorts. "What…the hell?" he whispers, taking each item from the box and placing it on the desk. At the very bottom of the box, on a sheet of cream writing paper, in a fine, neat hand is another note.

_If you still want to save him, solve my puzzle. If you don't, or if you fail, I'll do to him what I did to 'Adam'._

_You have three days._

_Cheers!_

_Jim Moriarty x_

"Adam? Who the hell is Adam?" Lestrade asks, and John passes him the first of many articles, the headline reading _TORSO OF CHILD FOUND IN THAMES_.

"Oh, Christ, not that," Lestrade closes his eyes in defeat. "Anything but that."

"You know the case then?" John looks hopeful for a moment, but he squashes upon seeing his friends face.

"Yeah. I know it. Fucking calamity it was. People up in arms like you wouldn't believe. Kids body was found floating down the Thames, but we never got anywhere with the investigation. This was before…before Sherlock came along. We did the best we could, but we had nothing to go on."

"Case was practically dead for a decade. We managed to track down a nanny a few years back who said she gave the kid to a man for safekeeping. Didn't do much good. She was totally unreliable as a witness. Case went cold again." Lestrade chews on his lower lip, looking apologetic.

Clapping him on the shoulder, John forces a smile. "It's not your fault, mate. You tried."

"If I'd tried harder maybe we wouldn't be here."

John gives him a sad, knowing look. "Yeah we would, mate. We would."

* * *

He doesn't go back to 221B that night, opting instead to sleep on Lestrade's couch in his tiny one bedroom flat. He doesn't sleep. He examines every scrap of paper in the box over and over and over again. He stares at the orange shorts, brow furrowed, thinking, _What would Sherlock do? What would he do?_

Nothing comes.

A day passes, then two, his stomach rolling with fear and anticipation. What if he failed? What if Sherlock was killed because he wasn't good enough? Because he was just a soldier with a stethoscope, and nothing more?

Even Lestrade seemed resigned to his failure; tip toeing around him and not mentioning that John hadn't been home to shower or change his clothes, only looking at him with pitying eyes.

"GOD DAMN IT!" he slams his hands down on the rickety coffee table, sending Lestrade's picture frames tumbling to the ground. He sighs and bends down to pick them up. They're nice photos. Mr. and Mrs. Lestrade stood with their three children in front of their nice, suburban home, smiles all around. Mrs. Lestrade obviously had put a lot of effort into making the children look well groomed and presentable. He wondered how many shops she'd gone to before she found what she was looking for.

_ That's a hell of a lot of effort for something they'll only wear once._

"Oh. _OH!_" In a flash he was off the couch and standing at Lestrade's bedside. "Greg! Greg! Wake up!"

"Whazm? Jawn? Wats happen'?"

"WAKE UP!" he grabs Lestrade by the front of his night shirt and hauls him upright. "Who did the shopping for your kids? You or your wife?"

"What? My wife. What's –

"Where would she go for knock-around clothes? Things she wouldn't be upset about if it got wrecked? Or lost?"

"I don't know. Tesco's, I guess. Asda's sometimes. If she was looking for something specific she'd go to the nicer shops."

"She wouldn't waste money on something she knew would be lost or ruined, right?"

"Well, yeah. It's only logical, right?"

_"Exactly."_


	3. To Tipple Sweet Champagne

"I'm telling you, they've done this already," Lestrade is grumpy and tired and under-caffeinated and John Watson does not have a single fuck to give.

He watches Lestrade fumble for the coffee maker, his own body thrumming with too much adrenaline to need the strong, black courage Lestrade craved. "Are you sure?" he asks. "This is Moriarty we're talking about. How do you know you can trust the people who ran the tests? After…_before_."

He knows Lestrade remembers the last time their lives had been thoroughly upended. Neither of them would ever forget the traitor, the sneaky little Sargent who'd been bought off the year before Sherlock had swan dived off the top of St. Bart's; lured into Moriarty's web by the promise of a glamorous promotion.

Gulping down his coffee, Lestrade shakes his head. "If I start thinking like that I won't be able to trust anyone."

_ Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe it's better this way. _"I still need to do this."

"Fine," the coffee cup chinks as it's set down on Lestrade's rickety kitchen table. The table wobbles and shakes, looking for all the world as if it would crumble, crack and crash to dust if forced to bear the weight of one more task. It wobbles. It creaks and trembles and then, quiet inexplicably and against all odds, it stills. "I'll set it up."

"No."

"John!"

But John doesn't look at his friend, only stares at the table. "It has to be me. I have to play by Moriarty's rules. I have to find the right people. I have to make the connections," the tip of his index finger nudges the table, making it sway to and fro at his will. "I have to carry this burden. I won't break. Not as long as there's strength in me."

"What are you going to do?"

Raising his head John smirks. "I'm going to send a text.

* * *

When the doorbell rings John nearly rips it from its hinges and, upon seeing the people on the other side, smiles his first real smile since Sherlock disappeared. "Chris! Thanks for coming on short notice."

"Yeah, no problem. We owe you, don't we?" Chris Melas smiles, bumping shoulders with his two friends.

Guiding the young men up the rickety stairs into Lestrade's apartment, six laptops in tow, John found the trembling in his hand fading as his spirits rose.

"So what's it you need, then?" Chris asks, rubbing his hands together.

"I need the names, addresses, and bank statements of every person who bought these during the week of September 21, 2001," John holds up the shorts for Chris to see.

"Uh," Chris casts a glance at his friends and then to Lestrade, "No can do. Highly illegal, that."

Lestrade rolls his eyes, the corners of his mouth twitching down for a bit. "I know nothing, I see nothing, I hear nothing," he says. "You have my word. Just help Doctor Watson."

Stepping forward John places his hand on Chris' shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze. "Please."

"You want me to violate the rights of some eight million Londoners in front of a cop?"

"Well, Yes."

Christ looks at his friends once again. For a moment, no one speaks. Then, as though some silent communication had passed between the three young men, Christ grins wide. "Why the fuck not?"

* * *

John paces.

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Again.

And again.

And again.

"Do you have anything yet?" he asks.

Brian, the groups "Web Designer", pops his head up from behind a computer screen. "Hacking is art, my dear Doctor Watson. You do not rush art."

"Right. Sorry."

"You couldn't give us something to narrow the field, could you?" Chris asks.

Dragging a hand across his face, John gives him a bleary eyed look. "What'd you mean?"

"Well, this list is all well and good, but it's going to be a bit hefty. Hundreds of thousands of people long. Maybe millions. We could narrow it down if you knew anything else."

"Like what?"

"Sex, age, location, income, race. There's a lot to work with."

There's a volcano erupting inside him, hot and heavy, and he lashes out, kicking at the coffee table and sending it scuttling across the room. "But I don't have any of that! All I've got is bunch of old newspaper clipping, a jar of dirt, and those bloody shorts!"

Kevin, the "Documentarian", looks up from his Nutella and banana sandwich. "Dirt?"

"Yes!"

"'avyouanazedit?"

"What?" John leans forward a bit, his fingers curling and uncurling in anxiety.

Kevin gulps down the last of his sandwich and dusts the crumbs from his shirt. "Sorry," he says. "Have you analyzed it?"

"No. Should I have?"

The three young men roll their eyes in unison. "Of course!"

* * *

John finds himself in Molly's lab, staring at a computer screen. He watches as it compares the small bit of dirt he placed inside it to samples taken from around the world, moving faster than any human brain on the planet.

Except Sherlock's, of course.

Molly is there beside him, staring off into the distance. "Do you think he'll be ok?" she asks.

"I hope so. I really hope so."

He looks at the clock.

Eighteen hours to go.

"What the hell is Kimmeridgian soil?" John says aloud, turning the report over in his hands, furrowing his brow and puckering his lips a bit.

"I dunno," Molly replies softly. "What else does it say?"

"Just that it's Kimmeridgian soil from somewhere around Champagne or the Loire Valley. But what does that mean? What the hell does France have to do with Sherlock? I don't give a fuck about France!"

"Well, they have good Champagne," Molly asks, fighting to get her latex gloves on her hands. "I wouldn't be surprised if Sherlock's brother – What's his name? – the politician? I wouldn't be surprised if he had some. But then you know politicians. They had their fingers in everything. Some of them probably own the vineyards."

"What?" John raises his head slightly and looks at her.

"Champagne. That's where it comes from. Champagne, France," she says. "Oh, God, sorry! We're supposed to be focusing on Sherlock."

Leaping up from his place behind the desk he sweeps the morgue attendant into a crushing hug. "Molly. Molly you are brilliant! I've gotta run! I owe you, Molly!" Grabbing his coat he dashes out the door with a smile and a wave, leaving Molly standing alone in the lab.

She looks about a bit, confusion written all over her face. "Ok."

* * *

"Chris! Chris!" he shouting as he takes the stairs up to Lestrade's apartment two at a time.

Chris appears on the landing, frying pan in hand, followed by Lestrade who was holding a cricket bat. They look at him with wide searching eyes, prepared to fight, to defend their friend, but upon seeing him alone they lower their weapons. "Christ, what was that about?"

"Chris," he's out of breath, huffing, ribs expanding, having run most of the way back. "Chris – _pant, pant_ – I need you – _pant, pant_ – to check – _pant, pant_ –all the, all the accounts – _pant_ – for purchases in Ch – _pant, pant, pant_ - Champagne, France. Land purchases. Big purchases. Christ…" he slumps down in the doorway, swiveling his head, looking for the clock. How much time? Are they out of time? They can't be! Not when they're so close!

"Right, yeah, on it!"

John watches as Chris calls out to his friends, the three of them typing furiously, sifting through the accounts at lightning speed. The minutes go by at a snails pace, each one constricting his heart a little more than the last. Every time he blinks, closes his eyes for a more than millisecond, he sees Sherlock beaten, bloody, broken. Torn limb from limb and tossed in the Thames like he was nothing, like he wouldn't be missed, like there was no one who loved him to mourn his death.

"I've got it!" one of them shouts. "One match! Abbot Kingsley! Christ, he's in Parliament!"

_Get up, Watson. Your friend needs you._ "Computer. I need a computer," he says, struggling to his feet.

A laptop is thrust in front of him as he sits at Lestrade's rickety kitchen table. Opening the web browser and logging in to his blog, he begins to type.

He pauses for a moment over the Publish button – thinks _Please, God, let me have gotten this right. _– and clicks.


	4. A Word of Warning

The next chapter in this story will be posted within a few hours, but before I post it I want to warn you all that_** it contains very graphic depictions of violence and torture and is not for the faint of heart.**_

Please take this into consideration before reading it.

For those of you who do not wish to read the violence, but with to continue with the story, I will include a brief, generic synopsis in the following chapter so that you are not left wondering what happened.

Thank you!


	5. Beneath The Bruises and The Blood

The silence is unbearable.

Not a single one of them so much as inhales deeply, fearing such a trivial act will set forth a cataclysmic chain of events; the flap of a butterfly's wing which starts a hurricane.

John's phone pings, the sharp _ba-dah-dah!_ tearing through the air, stopping all hearts in the room. Slipping it out of his jacket pocket he swallows hard before looking at the message.

_Turn on the television. – Jim._

His heart is in his stomach, doing the breast stroke in acid, as he picks up the remote and presses the on button. He doesn't need to guess which channel to change to. Whatever Moriarty has planned he'll want the entire world to see. BBC is the only logical choice.

There's nothing extraordinary happening. Some pretty little bird is covering the palace to palace bike ride for The Prince's Trust, all smiles and amicability. Fear and anxiety set fire to his veins, dipping and slipping their way through him like poison. _What now? What's your game? _he wonders.

"There's nothing," Lestrade whispers, yet as the words drift from his lips the screen cracks and fizzles with white noise, cutting from the smiling faces of the cyclers to a gruesome and terrifying scene.

Someone was jostling a camera, wiping a grimy cloth across the screen before setting it to focus. The blurry form of Sherlock Holmes comes careening into focus. Chained to a chair in a dark industrial looking room, clothes torn and crusted with seven kinds of filth, his head is bowed and his breathing, though shallow, is noticeable.

_Alive. He's alive. Oh, thank you God. He's alive._

A man walks into view. The camera jostles again, it's operator adjusting it so that the stranger on the screen's face well out of the shot. Not that John cares. All he can see is the blade the man tosses back and forth from hand to hand, like a child with a ball, circling Sherlock in a predatory manner.

At some unseen signal, the man seizes a handful of Sherlock's long black curls and gives them a mighty tug. Sherlock's head snaps up. His face is battered; cheekbones stripped of skin, nose resting at a painfully unnatural angle, blue eyes swollen and nigh invisible. There's tape across his mouth, but John doesn't need to see his lips to know they're busted open. If there was one thing that ever got Sherlock into trouble, it was that mouth of his.

Gripping the blade, the man brings it up and begins hacking at Sherlock's scalp. Great chunks of curls come out in fistfuls, caked with sweat and grime and blood, and behind the tape Sherlock is screaming.

To John it sounds like a frightened animal dying.

"Turn it off," Chris says gently. "Oh, Christ, turn it off."

Crimson streaks begin pouring down his flatmates forehead and into his eyes but for the life of him John can't look away. He knows, more surly than he knows his own name, that he will never forget this sight. He'll dream about it for the rest of his life, see it behind his eyelids during the split second of a blink, remember it every time he sees a boy in bar brawl or a battered woman in the A&E. It will never leave him.

The man pauses from his torturing for a moment, his attention focused on someone off screen, before reaching around and ripping the tape from Sherlock's lips. A guttural groan escapes from him; pink saliva dripping down his chin and onto his shirt. The groan grows into a scream as the man begins his task once again, yanking Sherlock's head to and fro as the blade digs into tender flesh.

Without warning, Sherlock twists around in the chair, fighting his chains, and sinks his teeth into his assailants' wrist. The man screams in surprise, dropping the blade to the floor, before jerking away to nurse his wound.

He returns only a moment later and puts all his weight behind a punch to Sherlock's face. The chair swings back under the momentum of the punch, sending Sherlock to the floor. He lands with a painful crack, his skull snapping on the concrete floor,leaving him dazed and disoriented. Which was probably just as well in the end, because his torturer had yet to finish his task, much less his revenge.

Growling in anger he beats Sherlock, the sound of his fist colliding with Sherlock's face echoing through the silent, dungeon like room, until his rage dissipates and he steps back to admire his work. With a satisfied huff he sets the chair to rights, Sherlock with it, and picks up the blade. Sherlock remains gloriously unconscious as the man finishes hacking off the last of his curls.

The man steps back as the camera tips up and for no more than a second John gets a good look at Sherlock's attacker.

It's the postman who delivered his package at The Yard.

A little giggle emanates from behind the camera as its user moves closer, stopping directly in front of Sherlock. A thin hand darts into the screen and slaps a deerstalker on Sherlock's bald and bleeding head before tipping his chin up to the camera.

John couldn't even recognize him behind the bruises and the blood.

The hand moves away and Sherlock's chin falls to his chest with a light _thunk_.

The cameraman spins and walks across the room to a large mirror. Poking his head out from behind the camera, Jim Moriarty smiles at the mirror and waves. "Goodnight, John-Boy."

The television screen crackles and pops with white noise once again and the BBC Newsroom stutters in to view. The anchor is panicking. "Get it off! Cut the feed! I don't care how! Is it off? Ladies and Gentlemen I must profoundly apologize on behalf of BBC and its partners –

John doesn't hear their platitudes. He's already in the bathroom, gagging and retching, sending everything he's eaten since the day he was born into the toilet.


	6. All Aboard The Jolly Roger

A short summary of the previous chapter, as per the earlier warning:

In the previous chapter Moriarty broadcast Sherlock being beaten and tortured on national television and the post man who delivered the original package to John is relieved to be in Moriarty's employ.

* * *

He's resting his cheek against the toilet seat, gasping for breath, stomach still churning, when his phone rings and music fills the air.

_Doctor, Doctor gimme the news! I've got a bad case of lovin' you…._

He lets himself fall backwards onto his haunches and for a moment he wants to give up. How can he rescue Sherlock from this? He's one man. One simple, ordinary man, and right now he feels like crying.

But he answers anyway.

"Very good, John-Boy," Moriarty's voice is like oiled silk in his ear. "I have to say I'm more than a little surprised."

"That me," he replies, grabbing the edge of the sink and pulling himself to his feet. "I'm full of surprises."

"Aren't you just?"

John stares at himself in the mirror. He looks old and haggard, even to himself. "So what now?"

"Now? Now that you're warmed up," sharp notes of glee tricked into his vocal register, "we moved on to round two."

"And what's round two?"

"Oh, no, no, no. You don't get to ask questions here, Johnny-Boy," Moriarty says, his voice lilting and soft in John's ear. "I say jump, you say 'Off what bridge?' I say kill the Princess of Wales, you say 'What sort of car?' I say get bent, you grab the nearest queen and let him roger you jolly in the middle of Trafalgar Square. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

Gripping the counter, John tries to steady his breathing and calm the rage welling up inside him, but the edges of the room are starting to blur together. "Yes."

"There's a good boy. So loyal. So obedient. Sherlock would be proud. Now, your package should be arriving any moment. Give Mr. Melas and Detective Inspector Lestrade my love."

Lowering the phone from his ear with one hand, John lashed out at the mirror with the other. The sound of it shattering was not nearly as satisfying as he thought it would be and he hated the way his reflection seemed trapped in the spider web of broken glass.

Reaching out with his injured hand, he ran the tips of his fingers over the spindly lines and fissures that radiated out from the center until he found one fragment that was slightly more raised than the rest. Jamming his fingernail into it, he worked at it, twisting and pulling at it, ignoring the blood that ran down his wrist, until it popped out and the entire thing came crashing down.

Smiling in satisfaction, John wrapped his hand in a towel and walked back into the sitting room.


	7. A Cold Wind Blows

The package arrives at Greg's door moments later. Announced by the ring of a bell, he finds it sitting inconspicuously on the stoop and takes it to the kitchen table where he sits and stares at it as Greg ushers the young men who had risked so much to help them out the door.

When they are gone Greg sits across the table from him. "It's not going to open itself, you know."

John looks at him balefully, but pulls the thick manila folder closer and slides a finger under the seal and empties the contents onto the table. It's much the same as the last, except that accompanying the faded newspaper clippings and witness reports was a thick piece of sturdy rubber. It was heavily grooved and worn, and smelt as though it had been burnt at one point or another. Wrapped around it was a note reading _'2 Days this time.'_

"Is that…a piece of tire?" Greg asked, reaching out to touch it.

"I think it is. Why would he send me a bit of old tire? She didn't die in a crash. She was shot."

"Might be a red herring. You know, give us something to throw us off."

John turned it over in his hands. "It means something. It has to. Just like with the dirt. It all means something. Puzzles don't have extra pieces."

Reaching out, Greg took the bit of rubber from him. "Sometimes they do, John. Remember who we're dealing with."

"I know, alright? And if it were anyone else, I'd say you were right. But this is Moriarty. He won't use tricks. He wants to prove he can beat me fair and square. Show the world just how stupid John Watson really is and, by extension, how stupid Sherlock is for believing in me."

Nodding, Greg turned his attention to the stack of papers in front of them. "Alright. Where do we start?"

Surveying the table, John sighed, and fingered a newspaper photograph thoughtfully. "I'll sort this lot. I need you to get me everything the Yard has on Jill Dando."

"You've got it."

"This is a bloody nightmare, Greg. I mean, Yugoslavs? Serbian war lords? Not to mention they had some poor sod in the chink for eight years who they later declared not guilty!" Tossing the police report aside, John pressed the heels of his hands into his eyelids until he saw stars. "She was a bloody TV presenter, not a MI-5 sleeper agent!" He paused for a moment. "Was she?"

Greg passed John a cup of much needed coffee before plonking himself back down on the sitting room floor amidst the endless files and dossiers on Jill Dando and the suspects in her murder. "You'd need to talk to Mycroft Holmes about that. I don't have the clearance for that sort of thing. Thank Christ."

Hanging his head, he rubbed his neck in frustration. "Where am I even supposed to start?!"

"Don't get pissed at me. I was just a lowly foot soldier back then."

Picking up a file at random, John began flipping through it. "Are any of these people still around?" John asked, taking a sip of the bitter coffee.

"I have absolutely no idea."

Setting his cup down, John stood up and grabbed his coat. "The paper work isn't going to tell us anything. We need to talk to people."

"What makes you think anyone will talk now?" Greg asked, pulling himself up from the floor. And just when he'd gotten comfortable too.

"Fifteen years is a long time to keep a secret. I'm just hoping someone's had an attack of conscience," he said as he descended the stairs, his shoes barely tapping one step before touching the next. "Where should we start?"

"Do you understand what you're saying?" Greg asked the woman before him. Once upon a time she had been a beauty, as the photographs on the wall could attest, but now she was pale and thin, her eyes sunken inside her skull, lips chapped and downturned in a self-depreciating smile.

Catherine Hogmyer pulled the oxygen mask away from her face and gave a soft cough. "I may be dying, Detective Inspector, but the cancer hasn't reached my brain just yet," her voice was hoarse. "I know what I'm saying."

"So you admit it was you?" John asked, leaning forward in his chair, the tea Mrs. Hogmyer's daughter had served forgotten on the coffee table. "You and this Umbar, fellow?"

Mrs. Hogmyer nodded.

"And where can we find Mr. Umbar?" Greg asked, pen flying across his notepad.

"Oh, in the graveyard," she said, pressing the oxygen mask back to her face, taking a deep breath, then pulling it away again. "Died of a heart attack last Autumn."

Standing up, Greg tucked his pen and notepad in his pocket before pulling out his handcuffs. "Catherine Hogmyer, I am placing you under arrest for the murder of Jill Dando."

"But why?" John asked suddenly. "Why did you shoot her?"

Mrs. Hogmyer looked at him sadly. "I'm Irish, boy. Ireland has been war torn for hundreds of years. All around was death and destruction. Someone offered to get me and my babes' out if I did them a favor. Why did I do it, you ask? Because I valued my life and the life of my little ones over that of a total stranger."

John watched in silence as Greg put the woman in cuffs and loaded her into the police car waiting outside, suspicion growing in his belly and making it quake.

As the car pulled away, Greg jogged back up the walk towards him. "The lads are taking her to the station for an official statement and booking," he said. "Well done, mate. We'll be able to do without Sherlock at the rate you're going."

John leveled him with a glare.

"Right. Sorry. That was...in poor taste."

Sighing, John shook his head. "There's something not right about this," he said. "It's too easy."

Greg slapped him on the shoulder. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, mate. This is a good thing."

A cold wind blew, rattling the trees and sending their leaves flying. "But it's just too easy."


End file.
